


Fledgling

by amine



Series: Gen X and Gen Z [20]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Awesome Pepper Potts, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Precious Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2019-09-17 07:26:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16970316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amine/pseuds/amine
Summary: "Peter had been beside himself at the prospect of getting to reveal himself to his heroes. Tony dreaded it.Still, he scoffed as he dragged items around and discarded others. 'Of course they’re going to love him. Everyone loves him. I hate everybody, and I love him.'"





	1. Chapter 1

“Everyone is going to love Peter, don’t worry.”

Tony was startled out of his brooding by the arrival of Pepper, and he shook his head as he resumed working on…what even was it? He stared at the holoscreens and remembered, oh right, he'd been working on Bruce’s Hulkbuster armor when he was reminded that the Avengers were going to meet Peter at long last. They’d worked alongside “Spider-Man” long enough that he’d been pressured to reveal the identity of their web-slinging comrade. He would have been just fine with being one of only a handful of people privy to that knowledge, but the other Avengers had argued that it wasn’t fair that they didn’t know who they were working with. Considering that they were trying to rebuild trust again, Tony could hardly refute their point.

Peter had been beside himself at the prospect of getting to reveal himself to his heroes. Tony dreaded it.

Still, he scoffed as he dragged items around and discarded others. “Of course they’re going to love him. Everyone loves him. I hate everybody, and I love him.”

Pepper bit back the small smirk on her face as she crossed the lab to lean against the workbench Tony was working at. “Well, at least you’re not denying it anymore.”

Tony momentarily froze. Having someone turn to dust in your hands after begging you not to let them go had a way of making you stop pretending that you didn’t love that person like they were your son. He quickly picked up where he left off and shrugged.

“Doesn’t mean I’m going to tell _him_ that.” He very nearly had, when he’d finally gotten Peter back, but even that surge of emotion hadn’t been enough for him to admit what he’d accepted. Maybe one day, but that would be far in the future. 

“You should. It would make him really happy.” Tony looked up at Pepper, and she smiled. “Speaking from experience.” 

“I do love you, you know.”

Her smile widened. “I know. Tell your kid that.”

“I’d rather sit here thinking up a better excuse to not let everyone else meet Peter.” He turned back to his work, hoping that the conversation was finished. 

“All right, what’s the real reason you don’t want anyone to meet him? If you’re not worried about them disliking him, what else would it be? It can’t be a safety issue. You know no one would tell.”

“Because…” He paused and grit his teeth. He hadn’t wanted to admit the real number one reason he didn’t want to reveal Peter’s identity to the rest of the Avengers. Pretending it was a safety thing was a convenient cover. Pepper was staring expectantly at him, though, so he closed his eyes. “He’s… _my_ sunshine child. I don’t want to share.”

There was a moment of silence, which was followed by Pepper snorting. Tony’s eyes snapped open to see Pepper covering her mouth, which was a poor attempt at hiding her enormous amused smile. He frowned and gave her his best mock offended look.

“Don’t laugh. You know he’s never going to want to hang around me anymore when there will be a whole mess of much cooler superheroes around. I’ll maybe get a ‘hey, Mr. Stark’ and that’s it. He’d rather work with Bruce or train with Cap or just…be around Thor. I think Thor is his favorite, actually.”

Pepper removed her hand from her face, but her smile was even wider than before. She looked almost manic in her amusement, which would have been amusing on its own if it wasn’t at his expense. “Oh please, Tony. Peter adores you. If you decided today that you were going to be a supervillain, Peter would sign up to be your right-hand man. If anything, he’ll spend even _more_ time with you since he won’t have to worry about hiding himself from the others.”

She pushed herself off the workbench and squeezed his shoulder. “Anyway, I came to remind you that the Avengers will be here in about an hour. You might want to spend that final time with Peter, don’t you think?”

Her expression was still amused, and he swatted at her as she left. She had a point, though, and Tony wrapped up what he was doing so he could meet Peter when Happy dropped him off.

* * *

As expected, Peter was practically vibrating with excitement as Tony walked with him to the meeting room where they would have their big reveal, and he babbled about how much he was looking forward to getting to know his heroes personally. It made Tony’s chest hurt a little at the small confirmation that he really was going to lose the exclusive privilege of being Peter’s only superhero mentor.

He had one last card up his sleeve, and as they paused in front of the doors, Tony felt he had to play it.

“Hey, kid, before we go in there, I just want to let you know…”

He put both his hands on Peter’s shoulders, and Peter looked at them before blinking owlishly at Tony. Tony gave Peter’s shoulders a reassuring squeeze and tried to speak, though his tongue had pasted itself to the roof of his mouth. He really was the worst at this kind of thing.

“Mr. Stark?”

That shook him out of his stupor, and he mentally kicked himself for being so selfish. Of course the others deserved to know him. What good was he trying to keep Peter to himself while simultaneously refusing to say how much knowing Peter meant to him. He wasn’t going to be like his father, unable to say anything kind except in secret recordings that were probably never meant to be found.

If Peter wanted to latch onto the others, Tony would encourage it. He’d scrutinize, but he’d encourage it. More importantly, though, he smiled at Peter and spoke confidently.

“I love you, kid. You’re like a son to me.”

He hadn’t known up until that moment that someone’s smile could shine bright enough to hurt to look at, but it came as no surprise that Peter was the one to pull it off.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been writing this for months and finally finished it! More fluff. :)

It had been a few days since Peter had been formally introduced to the Avengers, and, as expected, they all instantly loved him and wanted to get to know him better. Tony had only really seen him in passing since then.

Peter hadn’t even had the chance to respond to Tony’s emotional outburst, because shortly after he’d gotten the words out Pepper had quickly ushered them into the room and the true identity of Spider-Man was revealed.

Tony had known it was coming, but it didn’t make him any less depressed about it.

“It’s just like I thought. The kid would rather hang out with the ‘cool’ Avengers than me.”

Rhodey was over for the regular maintenance and updates on his leg braces, and he sighed as he lowered some paperwork. He gave Tony a long-suffering look, and Tony rolled his eyes in response.

“Don’t give me that look. The kid has been following Thor around making moony eyes at him for days now. He hasn’t even acknowledged me.”

That made Rhodey chuckle, and he set his paperwork to the side to give Tony a wide grin. “You haven’t noticed that Pepper does that, too? She makes excuses to be around him whenever he’s here.”

Tony gave Rhodey an aghast look, and he placed a hand over his chest in mock offense. “Honeybear, as my heterosexual life partner, you’re supposed to be on _my_ side.”

“I _am_ on your side. Which is why I feel it’s my duty to be brutally honest with you and tell you that _everyone_ would rather spend time with Thor than Tony Stank.”

He clapped his hand onto Tony’s shoulder for emphasis, and Tony shrugged him off with an annoyed grunt as Rhodey laughed. 

“But seriously, Tones. I give it until the end of the week before the novelty of hanging out with the other Avengers wears off and he’s spending almost all of his time with you again. It won’t be long after that that you’ll send me messages about how that ‘pain in the ass’ won’t stop with his puns and calling everything you love ‘really old’.”

Tony gave another annoyed grunt and continued his work, but there was that nagging anxiety deep down in his chest he couldn't get rid of.

* * *

Seeing Peter working in Bruce’s personal lab gave Tony a lot of mixed feelings. On the one hand, he cared deeply about both of them and was happy to see that they got along with each other well enough to work together. He was also shallowly happy that Peter had finally torn himself away from his Thor hero worship.

On the other hand, they were very clearly enjoying each other’s company, and given that Bruce didn’t let just _anyone_ into his lab, it said a lot about how he felt that he not only let Peter in, but was willingly working with him. Peter said something that made Bruce laugh and smile, and both of their demeanors were relaxed and comfortable.

He’d been proud that he’d been able to gain Bruce’s trust faster than the others had, but it had taken a good while before he’d gotten Bruce to smile like that. Meanwhile, it seemed Peter had pulled it off within a few hours.

He wanted to hiss “traitor” at them, though he wasn’t sure which one of them it would be directed at.

Instead, he slipped out without saying a word.

* * *

The next day, Peter had moved on to Steve and Barnes, and while he trusted them not to do anything that would endanger Peter, he’d probably always have a sore spot when it came to them.

They were having some sort of strength competition, it seemed, as they were lifting some of the heaviest crates in the compound out on the lawn. Tony was tempted to get the Not So Jolly Green Giant out there to blow them all out of the water, but that idea was quickly discarded. He didn’t want an out of control Hulk running around when he had no idea where Nat was.

His eyes widened as suddenly the crates were tossed and went soaring across the lawn, and as they crash landed there were cries of victory and defeat, with Peter hollering and showboating while Steve and Barnes shook their heads.

“We lost to a kid, Buck. Are we really that old?”

Barnes clapped his hand on Steve’s shoulder and sighed. “Luckily I’ve already got a farm in Wakanda if we need to be put out to pasture.”

They turned their attention to Peter, squeezing his shoulders as they congratulated him, and Tony smiled, pride warming his chest as Peter beamed. He was practically glowing as he basked in the praise from some of his greatest heroes, and that made Tony’s smile falter. 

Watching as Peter started razzing Steve and Barnes about their age, Tony ducked back into the compound.

* * *

He only had to intervene a few times in the activities that Peter was doing with the other Avengers.

Once when Natasha was planning to teach Peter some espionage tricks. Something about “spiders needing venom” which Tony found out meant poison that he quickly put a stop to.

Then there was an incident with Wanda and Peter testing out how their powers combined could create an unstoppable “youngest team members” force that nearly destroyed one of the warehouses. Tony had gotten over his general fear of dealing with Wanda enough to lecture her about combining psychic powers with spider strength and whatever spider-sense Peter had.

And then he just had to plainly tell Sam to stop giving Peter grief about the amount of gel he put in his hair to tame it.

* * *

He didn’t even have the energy to comment when he was walking down a hallway and the ceiling collapsed under the weight of Clint and Peter, who very quickly scuttled back into the vents, pulling the piece of ceiling with them.

* * *

In the end, he retreated to the sanctuary of his personal labs. There he could work in peace without seeing the other Avengers steal away Peter’s attention and adoration.

Oh, of course he was beyond thrilled that Peter had been so easily accepted and would have plenty of mentors and friends to look out for him not just as Spider-Man but as Peter Parker. He just couldn’t get rid of that nagging feeling of being left behind. He’d had the exclusive privilege of being Peter’s primary mentor for the majority of his time as Spider-Man, so it wasn’t as though he could complain if Peter moved on, but his emotions were at odds with his rational side. The emotions, unfortunately, were winning, and that was why he chose to escape instead.

“Mr. Stark?”

Tony froze, his heart racing as he slowly turned around to see Peter standing at the lab entrance.

Suddenly Tony was acutely aware that the last major interaction he’d had with Peter had been when he’d told Peter he loved him and thought of him as a son.

It was horrifying, to say the least.

Peter gave him a lopsided smile. “Can I come in?”

Tony relaxed, exhaling deeply. “Sure, kid. I’m working on a peripheral for Rhodey’s suit if you want to help.”

Peter’s eyes lit up as he quickly crossed the room to join Tony at one of the tables. They quickly fell back into their usual groove of easily and efficiently working together, and it was enough for Tony to put on one of his favorite playlists. Even the snarky comment about the music being “old” made Tony feel immensely better.

“Is it okay if I come here more often?”

Tony managed to not drop the wrench he was holding as the spell was broken. There it was. The real reason Peter was there. His chest suddenly ached as anxiety crept up on him. 

“You really need to ask? Everyone loves you. Of course they’d be happy if you were around here more often.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean…” Peter trailed off and scratched the back of his head. It wasn’t like him to be so shy, which made Tony’s anxiety build. Peter bit at his lip and shifted his weight before he finally spoke again. “Is it okay if I come here and work with _you_ more often? I mean, since I don’t have to hide from the others anymore.”

Tony’s mouth fell open, completely at a loss for words. He hadn’t expected that at all. He gaped wordlessly and uselessly for several awkward moments before he cleared his throat and waved in a dismissive gesture.

“Kid, you heard my embarrassing emotional outburst. Don’t make me repeat it.”

Peter’s anxious expression brightened, and all of the tension went out of his body as his smile proved that he deserved the moniker of “sunshine child”. Just that sight was enough for the heaviness in Tony’s heart to completely disappear.

“Oh, yeah! That reminds me that I didn’t get a chance to tell you…” Peter stepped forward, closing the distance between them. He wrapped his arms around Tony and squeezed him tight. “I love you, too, Mr. Stark.”

It was amazing how localized sudden rain could be, because Tony definitely wasn’t crying as he pressed his face to Peter’s hair and squeezed back. 

Interesting how he’d spent the majority of his adulthood making damn sure he didn’t have any kids out of fear of turning out like Howard, and yet here was this little pain in the ass from Queens who’d walked right into his heart and ignited every paternal instinct he’d done everything in his power to quash. There was absolutely no going back. Peter was his kid. 

Peter finally pulled away, beaming, and Tony quickly wiped at his eyes as he smiled back. He looked up to see Rhodey grinning from ear-to-ear in the doorway, mouthing “I told you so” as Tony flipped him off. Shortly after, his phone buzzed with a message from Pepper that also said “I told you so”. He looked up to scowl at Rhodey, who had disappeared.

Tony abandoned the idea of pursuing Rhodey as Peter started whistling along to the Ramones, and he couldn’t help but sing himself as they started their work again.


End file.
